CHAPTER I

Summary

If Arctic affairs intensely occupy the public mind at this moment, it is not so much in connection with scientific research and increase of knowledge, as with the feelings and dictates of humanity. Attention to the former is all but obliterated in the absorbing interest called forth by the latter; and, to the honour of human nature, it must be said that this intense interest and sympathy have been proved to exist among all classes, and all kinds of persons. During the past year especially, thousands have been heard, as with one voice, urging for relief to be sent to some of their suffering brethren, supposed to be imprisoned in wild and unknown regions around the Northern Pole. With a like generous and noble impulse, hundreds rushed forward, ready to forsake their own loved homes, their domestic comforts, and their usual safe pursuits, eager to join the gallant few chosen to search those desolate and ice-clad seas, in the noble expeditions fitted out by government for that purpose.

But before I enter into any minor details of the voyage, it will be necessary to explain whence this more than usual expression of generous sympathy and noble disinterestedness has proceeded.

In the beginning of the year 1845, it was determined by the government of England, at the suggestion of Sir John Barrow, the great promoter of all arctic discovery, to make another attempt at discovering “an entry from the eastern side of America into the Polar Sea,” and thence to proceed, through the straits which divide Asia from the New World, into the Pacific Ocean.